THE NEW YORKER and "had the com- plete trust of the zoo authorities, both for his abundant knowl- edge of these animals and for his warm, sin- cere personality." The elephant had been sent from East Africa twenty-two years ear- lier, but little was known about Its exact ." 1 age or Its persona- ity." The report con- cluded with a request from the police for citi- zens of the town to come forward with any in- formation they might have regarding the el- ephant. I thought about this request for a while as I drank my second cup of coffee, but I decided not to call the police-both because I preferred not to come into contact with them if I could help it and because I felt the police would not believe what I had to tell them. What good would it do to talk to people like that, who would not even consider the possi- bility that the elephant had simply vanished? I took my scrapbook down from the shelf, cut out the elephant article, and pasted it in Then I washed the dishes and left for the office. I watched the search on the seven- o'clock news. There were hunters carrying large-bore rifles loaded with tranquillizer darts, Self- Defense Force troops, policemen, and firemen comb- ing every square inch of the woods and hills in the immediate area as helicopters hovered overhead. Of course, we're talking about the kind of " d " d " h . 11 " fi d . h woo s an I s you n In t e suburbs outside Tokyo, so they didn't have an enormous area to cover. With that many people involved, a day should have been more than enough to do the job. And they weren't searching for some tiny homicidal maniac: they were after a huge African elephant. There was a limit to the number of places a thing like that could hide But still they had not managed to find it. 49 ,,( J p-/... .' CROSSED PATHS Munch Meets Beethoven . . The chief of police appeared on the screen, saying, "We intend to con- tinue the search." And the anchor- man concluded the report, "Who re- leased the elephant, and how? Where have they hidden it? What was their motive? Everything remains shrouded . " In mystery. The search went on for several days, but the authorities were unable to discover a single clue to the elephant's whereabouts. I studied the newspaper reports, clipped them all, and pasted them in my scrapbook-including editorial cartoons on the subject. The album filled up quickly, and I had to buy another. Despite their enormous volume, the clippings contained not one fact of the kind that I was looking for. The reports were either pointless or off the mark: "ELEPHANT STILL MISSING," "GLOOM THICK IN SEARCH HQ," "MOB BEHIND DISAPPEARANCE?" And even articles like this became noticeably scarcer after a week had gone by, untIl there was virtually nothing. A few of the weekly maga- zines carried sensational stories-one even hired a psychic-but they had nothing to substantiate their wild head- lines. It seemed that people were be- ginning to shove the elephant case into the large category of "unsolvable mysteries." The disappearance of one old elephant and one old elephant keeper would have no impact on the course of society. The earth would continue its monotonous rotations, politicians would continue issuing unreliable proclamations, people would continue yawning on their way to the office, children would continue study- ing for their college-entrance exams. Amid the endless surge and ebb of everyday life, interest in a missing elephant could not last forever. And so a number of unremarkable months went by, like a tired army marching past a window. Whenever I had a spare moment, I would visit the house where the elephant no longer lived. A thick chain had been wrapped round and round the bars of the yard's iron gate, to keep people out. Peering inside, I could see that the elephant-house door had also been chained and locked, as though the police were trying to make up for